This invention relates to a patient room headwall unit and, more specifically, a headwall unit adapted to be hung on the headwall of a patient room between two beds and to provide the necessary lighting, communication, gas and other electrical services to both beds.
It has been proposed heretofore in the art to provide patient service modules hangable from the headwall of a patient room capable of at least partially supplying the necessary services such as gas, electricity, nurse call systems and lighting to the hospitalized patients. These units have achieved primary effectiveness, particularly insofar as lighting is concerned, when a single module was utilized for a single bed as shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,769,502, issued Oct. 30, 1973, to Schultz, et al, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,803,396, issued Apr. 9, 1974, to Frank M. Damico. The provision of two separate-wings for each bed, as is illustrated in these patents, was necessitated primarily by the desire to achieve satisfactory lighting conditions at the patient bed. The resultant configuration, however, is quite expensive on a per bed basis and many hospitals for which the differing modular concepts disclosed by these patents held a great deal of appeal simply could not afford them.
It has also been proposed to service a pair of beds by positioning a single module in between them. Examples of such proposals are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,084,247, issued Apr. 2, 1963, to Mitchell Bobrick; U.S. Pat. No. 3,200,244, issued Aug. 10, 1965, to R. K. Meyer; U.S. Pat. No. 3,461,349, issued Aug. 12, 1969, to R. K. Meyer; U.S. Pat. No. 3,462,892, issued Aug. 26, 1969, to R. K. Meyer; U.S. Pat. No. 3,557,359, issued Jan. 19, 1971, to R. K. Meyer; and, U.S. Pat. No. 3,567,842, issued Mar. 2, 1971, to R. K. Meyer. The units shown in these patents, while achieving limited success, have not effectively dealt with the lighting problem particularly insofar as reading light is concerned. This reading light problem is accentuated when one considers the fact that a patient in a particular environment will adjust the head section of his bed to varying angles throughout the course of the day or night. While this problem has been solved to some extent through use of lights suspended from adjustable arms, such as shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,354,301, issued Nov. 21, 1967, to Bobrick, many patients are unable or unwilling to make the necessary adjustments and it has been necessary, typically, to provide supplemental ceiling reading light as illustrated in this patent, frustrating to great extent the entire modular approach and the heretofore at least theoretical economies to be gained through its use.